
Chicago residents have
faced an exceptionally deadly Summer this year — 123 people were shot and killed, twice the amount of US soldier casualties in Iraq over the same period.
Throughout 2008, murder rates in Chicago have risen. In July Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich said he was
prepared to call in the National Guard to help restore order to the "out of control" city.

It's a story that shocks a civilian frame of mind and raises so many questions about the effect of war on mankind: Three US Army soldiers
murdered four Iraqi prisoners by firing shots to the backs of their heads, execution-style, in the spring of 2007.
The story has
surfaced from a source close to one of the soldiers who says after they committed these murders, the US Army officers then dumped the corpses into a Baghdad canal. The killings were meant to avenge the deaths of two of their army comrades, and to this point, all members of Company D, First Battalion, Second Infantry, 172nd Infantry Brigade have not been charged with a crime.
Tremayne Durham, 33, Admits to Murder In Exchange For Junk Food A New York man who pleaded guilty to murder in Oregon in exchange for buckets of fried chicken will get calzones and pizza to go with his life sentence. Tremayne Durham, 33, of New York City, admitted last month that he fatally shot Adam Calbreath, 39, of Gresham, in June 2006. Durham wanted to sell ice cream and ordered an $18,000 truck from an Oregon company.

Nope, your browser hasn't crashed back to 1996 — the Boulder, CO, district attorney has just announced that
new DNA tests have cleared JonBenet Ramsey's entire family in the killing of the 6-year-old beauty queen, 12 years ago.
The tests point to an "unexplained third party" as the culprit in the crime from DNA
left behind in skin cells, one who is presumably still at large.
It's been confirmed that prosecutors no longer consider any member of the Ramsey family to be a suspect, though for years her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, were thought to be under an "umbrella of suspicion" in the girl's slaying.

The US Supreme Court
struck down the death penalty for cases of child rape as unconstitutional today, continuing its tendency to narrow, rather than expand, capital punishment. The broad ruling held that the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment requires that the defendant killed, and intended to kill, the victim in order to trigger the death sentence. The Court left room for death in cases of treason, by discussing only crimes against individuals.

Police and psychologists say that the
inaction of those who witnessed a 27-year-old California man beat his 2-year-old son to death on the side of the road was justified. The savage incident in which the grocery store working father pulled over to stomp and beat the innocent boy occurred Saturday night. None of the people at the scene, including a volunteer firefighter, intervened to stop the fatal beating.
R&B singer Ashanti has taken her
controversially violent music video, featuring an aggrieved woman murdering her lover, to the next level. Fans can now
send friends or enemies "gotchagrams," which pose as newscasts forecasting the recipient's imminent murder, which is inspired by Ashanti's video. Check out the graphic video that came with my "copycat" threat.

The South Pacific isle of Vanuatu has been voted the happiest place on Earth. Is it a luxurious island paradise of sipping Mai-Tais on the beach, being fanned by tanned studs? Hardly.

The bodies of three babies
have been found in a basement freezer in the town of Wenden, in western Germany. The woman believed to be the mother of the three, who also has three children aged 18 to 24 living at the house, has been arrested.
The three babies were not stillborn, though the cause of death and the infants' ages have not been released.